


Looking for Trouble

by Fluffysminion



Category: Warhammer 40.000
Genre: Dark Heresy - Freeform, Inquisition's Day Off, Mutant, Ordo Xenos, Port Caius
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-29
Updated: 2020-10-16
Packaged: 2021-03-08 01:35:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,032
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26717593
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fluffysminion/pseuds/Fluffysminion
Summary: Zalis is perfectly happy to be a well behaved little psyker just long enough for people to take their eyes off her. When that happens she has so much inadviable science to catch up on.
Kudos: 5





	1. The Science of Monsters

Zalis can never decide whether she enjoys the time between missions or not. Not being shot at is definitely a point in its favour, as is not having to worry about being woken up by a grenade or an angry crocodilian. It is a relief too being away from the constant arguments and death threats that are inevitable whenever her team is around each other, here there is no-one looking over her shoulder looking for an excuse to shoot her in the head. The downside of being unsupervised is the lack of access to her research materials; her notes, all the specimens, anything she might possibly be able to work on all sealed away the moment the mission is over. The inquisition know how much to trust her and that is not one bit.

But she’s never let that stop her before and doesn’t intend to now. Many of the most important details and observations she carries with her in patterns on her possessions that are hard to recognise as code or in her memory, though she lacks the augmentations to store much information there reliably. As for specimens… The fringe ports they have to send her through to cross the great distance between mission sites are the perfect habitat for genestealers.

Port Quays is particularly promising. Such a haphazard, unregulated station outside of imperial control with no vetting or quarantine procedures at all. She is barely able to hide her excitement when her escort start sharing rumours of a monster, odds seem good for an encounter despite the brief layover period.

Her travelling companions are the remains of a different acolyte team, one that gets along well enough to be kept together during their recuperation assignment. They were initially unhappy with being assigned a psyker to keep an eye on, but as long as she didn’t do any obviously witchy stuff they were happy to just check every couple of days that she hadn’t exploded.

So she doesn’t think they found it suspicious when she declined to go with them to another of their “somehow still breathing” celebrations (they were really very organic, and their definition of celebrating was trying to ingest as wide a variety of substances as possible before they passed out).

She is glad of her gas mask as she sets out into the station, the great pillars and vaulted halls are encrusted with cancerous growths of decidedly off-template architecture and there is an obvious lack of the usual haze of incense and candle smoke that would be proper in such a great machine. She pities the ships that have been lashed together to form Port Quays, trapped in place no longer able to fly through the void, prevented from fulfilling their noble purpose of exploration. They can’t enjoy being filled with criminals and runaways who don’t treat them with the respect they deserve, though at least it means they aren’t going to be lonely.

She has to travel quite a distance from the docks before missing people posters start showing up, but when they do she is surprised and a bit disappointed that the faces don’t have the strong female bias typical of genestealer infestations. These could be feeding attacks rather than attempts at reproduction, or there might not be many women of childbearing age out on their own. If the latter, she should be almost guaranteed to get attacked.

She has almost given up when there’s a thud as something drops down behind her, she grasps the scrap of fur that acts as her psy-focus tight and raises her other hand in preparation to release her bio-lighting should it get too close. As she turns she sees long slender, almost skeletal limbs unfold and her heart leaps – a pure strain! But the creature keeps unfolding, with only two arms and antlers sprouting from a mess of short hair it’s clear she’s been caught by a large but distinctly human mutant. She releases her held breath in a disappointed sigh.

“Are you alright? Are you lost?” The mutant approaches in a crouch, hands raised, palms facing her. “I don’t want to frighten you, but you’ve been going around in circles for the last couple of hours and I’m a bit concerned”

She lowered her own hand, though she kept a tight grip on her psy-focus. “There’s no reason to be. I know what I’m doing.” She slowly steps to one side, to see if the mutant is trying to trap her or is just in the way. To her dismay he matches her movement, blocking the way out.

“And what, pray tell, might that be? I’ve been watching you for a while and I have to say that the way you’ve been studiously avoiding people is very suspicious. But I just can’t figure out what you might be up to. Care to enlighten me?” He stepped towards her, hands still in a gesture of peace but with a distinctly hungry expression. Zalis starts to feel like she might, possibly, have made a mistake.

“I’m looking for the monster. The spring-heeled beast?” No harm in sharing that. Probably.

The mutant laughs. “Well you’ve found him. What now?”

“Oh. How disappointing”

“I’m _so sorry_ I’m not impressive enough for you. Expecting something with more eyes? Teeth where they shouldn’t be? Want me to rub myself on some ritual sites and come back when I’ve grown some tentacles?”

The fact that the mutant takes it so personally intrigues her. “I was hoping to find some xenos, actually. Genestealers to be precise.”

“And these xenos you were hoping to find lurking in dark alleyways, what were you hoping would happen when you found them? I’m still not seeing what you were hoping to achieve here.” He tilts his head and moves closer, she’s not sure whether this is curiosity or if he’s just toying with her.

“Genestealers, the purestrains at least, are quite aggressive creatures so I was expecting an attack. Though the really interesting thing about them is their reproductive methods so I was really hoping to witness an impregnation attempt-“

“Woah woah woah, let me stop you right there. You were _hoping_ that a xenos would try to impregnate you? _That_ ’s why you’re here?”

“I wasn’t going to let it of course, but yes. I have only encountered them when with a large group previously, and thus have only seen their threat response. I still know very little about their hunting and reproductive behaviour, witness of such events tend to be killed rather than questioned so despite it being not all that uncommon there’s really not much information out there about it.”

The mutant sighed and shook his head. “Do you know what? I think I believe you. You’re crazy, but there’s no law against that and you don’t seem to be putting anyone else in danger.” He stood up; he was really very large, at least twice her height, and he looked down at her with such evident concern that she began to doubt her assumptions about his earlier intentions. “But may I suggest you take up a less dangerous hobby? I don’t know about xenos, but there are plenty of humans that would attack you or worse if they found you wandering out here alone. Why don’t you let me take you back somewhere safer?”

“ **That really won’t be necessary.** ” She didn’t notice the force she’d put behind the words until she saw the mutant’s response. His pupils dilated, and he fell to all fours in his scramble to get away.

“Witch!” He hissed, momentarily tangled as he tried to balance fleeing with not wanting to take his eyes off her. But it was only a moment and then he was gone, springing like a hormagaunt onto the storey above and vanishing into the darkness.

Zalis peers in vain at the backlit struts and walkways above, but after a couple of minutes with no sign of movement she gives up, taking the mutant’s advice and leaving. It was a shame that she wasn’t going to be able to procure a genestealer specimen to study, but she was left with many other questions from that encounter. The mutant had claimed to be the beast, did that mean it was responsible for those disappearances? And if so why? And how had it noticed her calling on the warp before she had realised that was what she was doing?

It also occurs to her that all her previous studies on mutants have been captive specimens in poor condition. Far from being a disappointment she should see this is a rare opportunity to study a mutant in the wild, as it were. For what environment is closer to a mutant’s native habitat than a lawless station outside of imperial space? The acolytes supposed to be supervising her should be out of action for the next couple of days, so there’s nothing preventing her from returning tomorrow to find out the answers to see if she can find answers to some of her questions.


	2. A Deeply Heretical Conversation

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Zalis returns to confront the monster, who really just wishes that she'd leave him alone.

“Get out.” This time the beast appears almost as soon as she leaves the main walkway, crouched on a nearby roof as if he had been waiting for her. Zalis is delighted.

“I just want to ask you some questions.” Truth be told she’d also like to take him apart to see how his anatomy works, but since that’s clearly not an option questions will suffice.

The mutant sighs and shakes his head. “Did you learn nothing from yesterday? I told you there are no xenos here, no genetheives, nothing. Go be a crazy witch somewhere else.”

“I’m sorry about yesterday, I didn’t mean-“

“Damnit! I knew it, I fucking knew it. You’re not even trained are you?” He scowls at her with distain, as if her lack of experience is a personal failing.

“Hey! I’m sanctioned. I know what I’m doing.” She even is. Technically.

“Yeah, and I’m an agent of the inquisition.” He sighs. “Look, it’s not an accusation. I’m guessing you had an emergency sanctioning in the field that didn’t involve much explanation.”

He stands up and suddenly the space between them doesn’t seem so big as he steps from the roof to the walkway ahead of her. His height is more impressive up close, there is something instinctively intimidating about having to look straight up to see his face, but it is also evident that most of that extra length comes from his limbs. He takes her hand with exaggerated care, as if afraid he might break it; cold digits comparable in length to her forearm press a hilt into her palm then release her.

“I don’t know if they gave you a blade during your sanctioning, but I’ll feel better knowing you have one. Keep it to hand at all times, and if you feel something clawing through, or yourself losing control, go straight for the heart.” He pauses to watch her examine it, waiting for her to look up at him before continuing. “I hope you have a psy-focus, not that there’s anything I can do if you don’t.”

“I do. Are you a psyker then? Is that how you knew what I was doing?” Zalis doesn’t feel anything from the mutant, but she’s not sure if that means anything.

“Ha, no. In another life maybe.” He smiles sadly.

She has no idea what that’s supposed to mean. “Did something happen to you then?”

“Look, I appreciate the effort you’re putting in to pretend to care about my personal life, but I’m a busy man and I’d rather you just asked whatever you came here to ask then went back to whoever’s supposed to be keeping an eye on you.” He doesn’t sound like he appreciates it. Quite the opposite in fact.

All the questions she had only minutes ago are gone from her head as she looks up at the impatient mutant. His lips are curled back almost into a snarl and an animal part of her tells her to run. But she persists. “I’m curious about your anatomy, your um, differences”

“It’s ok, you can say mutations. Believe it or not I had noticed that I’m a mutant.” He snorts, perhaps in amusement? “I was born human, stood too close to a psyker and then I started changing. Stopped being able to eat regular food, then after I changed my diet I started getting bigger. Got my new teeth after the old set fell out, they were too small to be useful at that point anyway, and these antlers are a recent development. Does that tell you all you wanted to know? Can I go now?”

“Why are you so desperate to get away?”

“Because I’m ravenous. I didn’t eat yesterday because I spent too much time trying to protect you from your own stupid choices, and there’ll be no food today either if instead of hunting I’m stuck here indulging your damnable curiosity.”

“What are you hunting out here?” She’s also not sure why that’s her fault, but she knows better than to say that. He

“People, my naïve little psyker. I eat people. I thought that was clear.”

That did suggest she hadn’t been imagining it when she thought he looked like he might try to eat her yesterday. “Do you want to eat me?”

“Of course I do! I’ve never tried psyker, but I’ve heard they taste particularly good to man-eating monsters like myself. But I’m not stupid, the last thing I want is to do something that might make you call out desperately to the warp. It’s not just me that will suffer if you let demons through. So you have nothing to fear from me, not that you seem capable of feeling fear.”

“In that case, spring-heeled beast, would you be more cooperative if I compensated you for your time? I could cut a strip of flesh from my leg for you to try.” A knife wound might be difficult to explain though. Maybe that’s not such a good idea. “Or better, I’ll let you bite a chunk out of me. I have plenty of bite scars from my other research subjects so it’s less likely to be noticed.”

“From your other research subjects? Someone needs to stop you woman.” The mutant sighs, he still doesn’t seem happy but his body language is less hostile. “Fine. I’ll help you find out what you want to know for a mouthful of flesh and one other condition – AS SOON as our discussion is over you go straight back to whoever is supposed to be responsible for you and you stay in their sight doing nothing dangerous or crazy until you leave this station. DO I MAKE MYSELF CLEAR?”

“Yes, we have a deal.” Zalis smiles, it was a lot more work than expected but she feels she’s finally getting somewhere. Dead specimens are so much more straightforward.

“Good. Now I suggest we find somewhere more comfortable to talk, my neck’s gone stiff from looking down for too long. And you can call me Jaspar, its less of a mouthful than spring-heeled beast and a damnsight more polite.” He drops to all fours, his face now level with hers and for the first time that day is smiling.

“Zalis.” She almost offers a hand as well as her name, but she doesn’t fancy being grabbed again.

“Much better, positively civilised. Now I’m sorry about this, but your walking speed is painfully slow.” Her legs are struck, she falls, she is pressed tight against the mutant’s chest. She can only move her head and her arms. But heedless of her thrashing, he runs.


	3. Hospitality

The spring-heeled beast places Zalis on her back in a crude nest of mostly soft materials. He then retreats to the other side of the chamber which is still closer than she’d like. She presumes this must be the heart of the great machine, stripped of all that human hands could take and left to the monsters. Dim amber light flows in from the hazard lamps on other parts of the machinery and it is quiet, terrifyingly, soul-crushingly quiet. She can hear neither the hum of human voices or the whirring and clanking of machinery. The voidship’s heart is hollow, and very very dead.

She lowers her head and says a short prayer for the fallen machine, it is painful to see something that was once so powerful and valued left to ruin like this. After a moment she adds another prayer for her own soul, for the innards of the dead ship she finds far most distressing than the large mutant making himself comfortable across from her. It is hard not to look at the ship, gutted and riddled with parasites, and see a bad omen.

“Aaah, that’s better.” In the low light Zalis can only make out a rough outline of the mutant’s body, and the glistening of his fangs when he talks. “Sorry if the ride over was a little rough, but that was no place to hold a conversation. That guy running back and forth a couple of streets over was really driving me crazy, the smell of sweat was so appetising.”

Her senses have started to adapt, she’s fairly sure they are in what was once a huge piston; the space is very tall but there’s comparatively little floorspace, and the hole the light is coming from is messy and clearly not supposed to be there. The mutant watches her expectantly. “Do you hunt by scent then?”

“Not at all, I can pick up smells well enough I think, I’m just pretty hopeless at the whole tracking part. They’re hard to remember too, most of the time all I can tell is that some human has been there recently. Which, in a city, is usually not all that useful.” He shrugs.

Zalis feels around for somewhere vaguely stable to use to push herself up, the fabric beneath her is not a solid mass and has many seems and buttons. Clothes, she realises. The floor is lined with clothes. “How do you hunt then?”

“Sometimes it’s a simple case of jumping at them or running them down, but sometimes it takes a bit more work. Fortunately people leave trails everywhere they go, where they work, where they sleep, where they eat, most aspects of their lives will be visible to at least some others. Then it’s just a matter of asking the right question to the right person; or knowing which files to check.”

“You hunt people by going through their paperwork?”

His loud barking laugh echoes upsettingly. “No point wasting time following someone around hoping they’ll go somewhere convenient when you can just look up where they live and what hours they work.” He leans forward. He is too gaunt for Zalis to read his expression in the low light, his eyes are sunk deep in their sockets and the edges of his mouth are shadowed by his cheekbones. “I keep my own records too of course, details from one target can save a lot of work looking for the next.”

This is much further removed from the creatures she is used to that she was expecting, and Zalis is beginning to feel she might be out of her depth. “And these, er, clothes, are these from your… targets?”

“Oh, sorry! I should have said. Don’t worry, the clothes in here have all been cleaned. They may be a bit stained, but there’s no blood or meat stuck to them and they’ve been treated to get rid of bugs. So you don’t need to worry about catching anything from them.”

“That’s… good.” Better than the alternative she supposes, but not the denial she was hoping for. Best not to think about it too much.

“Wait, can you see? It is quite dark…” He waves his hands around. “You can’t see. You should have said something, it’s been a long time and I forget sometimes how much I’ve changed. Just… stay put and don’t cause any trouble while I get a light, ok?”

He is gone before she can say anything, and she is glad of it. Despite her academic interest in the mutant, it was not a comfortable experience being trapped in the dark with it. Surrounded by the remains of previous victims she’s certain that it’s just the creature’s fear of psykers keeping her alive right now, and that if it found out how ineffective most of her abilities were she’d be dead.

The mutant bounds back in only moments later, placing a glow-globe on the floor before flopping down next to her, the floor shaking with the impact. His pupils are reduced to pinpricks in the bright light, giving the unpleasant impression that he lacks them entirely. “What is your interest in mutants anyway? Not exactly an approved area of study, especially for a _sanctioned_ psyker.”

“I’m mainly interested in xenos, actually. But genestealers, the ones I was looking for, are often mistaken for mutants. Or the other way round, in this case. I’m curious about you because I might find something that will help me avoid this mistake in future. You see genestealers-“

“Let me stop you right there.” He raises a hand and Zalis flinches, but he stops in front of her face instead of grabbing her. “I heard far more than I wanted to about those things when you used the word ‘impregnation’ yesterday. I’m sure you know lots about them and you find them very interesting but I’d really rather you kept that knowledge to yourself.”

“Right.” She’s still nervous, but she’s already gone too far and she’s not going to learn anything useful by just watching from a distance. She coughs; and tries to sound authoritative without trying too hard and activating her suggestion. “Now would you get up so I can examine you?”

Aside from some incomprehensible grumbling noises there are no protests, the mutant climbs to stand on all fours and waits there. Kidnapping aside he’s the best behaved subject she’s had. Standing like this his shoulders are about level with hers, his legs folding digitigrade to fit under his hips.

Zalis steps forward, despite the mutant’s size and having experienced his strength he’s so thin part of her is convinced he is fragile. The shapes of his bones are clear beneath the skin, even ones that shouldn’t be visible at all. His skin is translucent, she can see the mesh of blood vessels beneath across most of his body. Apart from the scars. He has a lot of scars.

She puts a hand on the side of his ribcage, the solidity of it removes the impression of fragility. She is certain that if he wished he could turn around and kill her before she knew what was happening, but instead he tolerates her. She can feel the ribs move as he breathes, and the slow thudding of his heartbeat. “You are beautiful.” She whispers.

His elbow to her chest knocks her backwards. “That’s not a word I’d use.” He watches her stumble, regain her footing and step forwards again. He shakes his head. “This is too weird. I don’t know what you want but I am done indulging your madness.”

“No wait!” She reaches out, grabbing his arm as he tenses to spring and she slips further, her vision fading out as she reaches inside his head.

Hunger. A familiar feeling, though not as loud and soul consuming as the tyrranid hive mind. Hunger. It runs deep into his soul, a thick knotted rope that the rest of his thoughts branch off from. hunger. There is another emotion there, a faint aura wrapped around it. hunger. She moves closer. FEAR. She is looking down at a pair of hands cradling a dead rat-

Zalis is snapped back to her own body as it hits the wall. She screams as something breaks.

“GET OUT OF MY HEAD!” The mutant’s roar is so loud she hears it clearly even through her own screaming.

She slides, or falls, or slumps to the floor; the second impact blurs her vision and starts all the pain anew. When she looks up, the monster is gone.


End file.
